Funerals are markers in our lives, and that of communities

Attending funerals and recording the names of mourners was among the early tasks for a junior reporter, and friend, who worked at this newspaper as a sub-editor before returning to his home in England.

A list of mourners would probably not make good reading unless that list was personally important in that underlined, or said something about the standing within the community of the person being buried.

Funerals are markers in our lives, and that of communities.

Funerals are fascinating affairs, bringing together a disparate group of people from lovers, family, friends, work colleagues, enemies, advocates, the local who is “at everything”, and the occasional character who can’t wait for the formalities to end and the free food of the wake to begin.

However, they can also be a learning experience with tales told during the eulogy revealing a whole new aspect to the life of the person  being buried.

Some things are alarming, some are ridiculously funny and some help you better understand why things are the way they are and within that explain something about history, particularly the era through which the soul being celebrated lived.

A near 90-year-old aunt was buried in Echuca recently and the stories of her life evoked a host of memories, among them what a wonderful story teller she was.

Nothing was ever missed and within a flash, a riveting and almost scary tale about a police escaper crashing through the backdoor could change to a side-splitting story, without interrupting the original story-line, about burning the breakfast toast.

It’s worth retelling a little about the fellow running from the police, he burst into my aunt’s house with the police in close pursuit, my aunt and her husband retreated to a bedroom, while the police and the villain crashed about the house, pepper-spray was involved and the arrest took some time until the four or five police officers finally cornered and subdued the escaper.

That story had a certain vigour and it was re-energised in every telling by my aunt, but that was just one story from the week as it was only as few days later that a rogue bull escaped from the city’s sale yards and ended up in my aunt’s yard.

Soon after, some people searching for the bull arrived, shot it and it died in my aunt’s driveway. Those stories weren’t told at the funeral, but my aunt told them with such colour, detail and shrieks of laughter that they are fixed my memory.

Funerals are frequently life-markers, both for individuals and communities.

There is alway pre and post funeral memories and beyond that, it seems they say something about your inclusion in whatever community you call home.

St Arnaud in central west Victoria was my home for about two years in the early eighties and although my family and I enjoyed our time there, never did I feel sufficient connection with anyone to attend a funeral.

Having moved to Shepparton from St Arnaud and lived here ever since, I now attend two or three funerals a year, although I am getting older and so friends and other community colleagues are dying with an alarming regularity. 

Attendance at a funeral, beyond immediate family and friends, has always seemed to me a marker of your arrival as a “local”.